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Scene

Friday, Oct. 09, 2009

Joan Osborne brings music off her latest CD and a couple of friends to the Gallo Center

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A lot has changed since Joan Osborne imagined God as an everyday person in her 1995 hit, "One of Us."

The 47-year-old rock singer with roots in blues, gospel and soul appeared in the 2002 documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," released six more albums, toured with the Dixie Chicks, sung with the Grateful Dead and became a mom.

Next week, she will perform at the Gallo Center for the Arts with the Holmes Brothers, a rocking roots trio that blends the secular and the sacred, and Paul Thorn, an Americana singer/songwriter from Mississippi who has opened for artists including Sting, Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt. The two other groups will play separate sets first and then the Holmes Brothers will join Osborne's backup band.

"It's going to be my own music with different songs from different records we've done," Osborne said of the Gallo show. "It's going to have a rawness that my usual shows don't have."

Much of that will come from the Holmes Brothers, who are known for their aggressive mix of roadhouse rock and gospel music. "I've known these guys for many, many years," she said. "When I first took my baby steps of singing, they were the kings of the scene in the downtown New York club world."

Born in Anchorage, Ky., Osborne started taking her performing seriously in the early 1990s after performing at open-mike nights in New York. She eventually signed to Mercury, which released her most famous album, "Relish," in March 1995. "One of Us" was a huge success and was followed up by lesser hits "Right Hand Man" and "St. Teresa." She also gained fans from performing in Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair tour in 1997.

A few years later, Osborne sang "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" in the movie "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." The film documented the Funk Brothers, uncredited studio musicians who performed on Motown albums in the 1960s.

By 2003, she accompanied the Dixie Chicks on a national tour and sang with The Dead. The following year, her first and only child — a daughter — was born.

"I love it," she said. "It's the greatest challenge that I've ever had. It's amazing and joyful and heartbreaking. It's definitely a full-on thing to be a mom, at least for me."

All along, she has found time to continue her music. "Breakfast in Bed," her 2007 collection of cover songs, includes hand-picked R&B and soul favorites like "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Midnight Train to Georgia." Her latest CD, "Little Wild One," was released at the end of last year.

"It's a record that's very much about New York City and living in New York City," she said. "It's very much informed by my life here."

Some of the songs are inspired by Walt Whitman poems. Osborne finds that there are a lot of similarities between the New York he described of more than a century ago and the New York of today.

The song "Sweeter Than the Rest" references the Whitman poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Osborne said on her Web site that she wrote the song about memories of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with a man who no longer speaks to her.

In her phone interview, Osborne clarified that that was the case when she wrote the song, but that she and the man have since reconnected over a mutual friend who was ill. "It's blossomed into a nice friendship," she said, adding that the man knows the song is about him and looks forward to hearing it at her shows.

Osborne is already hard at work writing new music and has been looking to a diverse array of influences for inspiration. She has found herself listening to classical composers like Debussy and Mozart and also checking out kawali music, the religious music of the Sufis, a sect of Islam.

"I'm trying to push myself out of song structures that are verse-chorus-verse-chorus," she said. "I'm expanding that to things less tied to pop structures."